2 comments:

Bob, thanks for the link! Its been an off week... I've been trying to complete putting in some laminate flooring in the kitchen & dining room. The pics are cool, lots of interesting small towns, and photos of the landscapes. By the way, did we go to the golf tournament at Champions Club a few years ago? I'm not sure how many brothers John has.

A few questions...When you started biking it, did you start with a road bike right away?How many miles did you ride each week?I'm sure it was tough at first, what kept you motivated?

I know what you mean about household interruptions - I've been redoing our deck all July - no fun at all.

I think I did see you at the Champions Club - I was there with my Dad.

I first started biking about three years ago (I'm 46 now) as a way to deal with a diagnosis of type II diabetes. For the first year, I rode my son's Target mountain bike about 2-3 times a week for about 10 miles each trip on a local bike path. I didn't ride at all in the winter. The next year I decided to get into it a little more and bought a Trek Hybrid bike (7200 model). I still mostly rode the paths for 10-15 miles each ride, but as I got in better shape, that didn't seem like enough, so I started to ride on highway shoulders and county roads on the south side of Lincoln. Still 2-3 days a week, but now with the occasional 20-30 miler.

A friend of mine that summer convinced me to try a ride to Crete with him (this is about 45 miles from my house). He rode a road bike, I rode my hybrid, and I struggled like crazy to keep up with him. This was my first time riding with somebody else, and it motivated me to get better. It also showed me that for longer distance riding, I would do better on a road bike. After saving up for about 6 months, last summer I got the road bike and started doing more rides. The same friend convinced me to use the Tour as a training goal - as you are doing with Ragbrai.

To train for the Tour de Nebraska, I got an indoor trainer for the winter, so I could keep riding. Once the weather got reasonable, I tried to do 2-3 rides on weekdays of about 15-20 miles. Starting in late March, I upped the mileage to 2-3 rides of 20-30 miles each on weekdays, with a weekend ride of 40 miles. In April, I increased the weekend distance to 50 miles, in May I increased it to 60 miles. Right before the tour I backed off on the mileage a bit with a 40 mile ride a few days before the tour as my last training ride.

One thing that really motivated me was joining group rides. There is a bike club in Lincoln which does about a 30 mile group ride every Thursday night and longer rides on Saturday mornings - the Saturday rides can be anything from 40-100 miles. I also occasionally do Saturday morning rides with a number of people who went on the Tour de Nebraska. On Wednesdays I sometimes ride with a racing team which hosts an open ride. All of these rides are motivating as I'm often the slowest, least experienced biker in the group, and I learn a lot from watching them about how to ride in a paceline, drafting techniques, etc.

Sorry for writing a novel in response to your questions - if you have any others let me know.